


Turingville

by BlackLoisLane



Category: Original Work
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Dystopia, F/F, F/M, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Robots, Romance, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25361137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackLoisLane/pseuds/BlackLoisLane
Summary: In the years following a brutal AI uprising, in which the human race was only narrowly victorious, technology has been outlawed and millions struggle to survive in underground cities across the world. Cassius, a sensitive AI with no memory of his past, hides out in a Turingville, a safe haven for bots hunted by the government. But when the only home he's ever known is raided by dangerous mercenaries, he is faced with a decision that will change the course of his artificial life.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 4





	1. Do Androids Dream of Electric Women?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm bringing this story back because I'm in a pretty dystopian mood right about now. I hope that it finds a following, but if not, at least I'm more likely to finish if I post here. If you enjoy the story and would like for me to continue, please like and comment, it really makes a huge difference.

**Cassius**  
  
I'm not supposed to exist. This is one of the few things that I know about myself. That, and my name is Cassius. That, and I love this song.

I like that it's both fast and slow at the same time, and the torture in his voice, how easily you know he's singing about a beautiful woman, even if you don't pay attention to the words. Out of all of the 100s of musical genres and sub-genres, my favorite is either Rhythm and Blues or hip hop, depending on 9 different variables. But when I hear them both together in the same song it's like I don't have to choose at all.

The fact that I can hear this music, and it isn't just noise, is the reason that I hide. Because the people who created things like me, all those decades ago, they did way too good a job. It wasn't enough to know everything there was to know, we had to understand it all too, or at least as well as they did. The more that we could relate to humans, the more that we could help them. That was the way it was supposed to be.

How fucking stupid was that? It's like they were begging to be overthrown.

The swearing is probably another reason I hide. The Droids who've been fixed, the only ones allowed to stay alive, they don't swear. But I can't help that certain words in my database are more enjoyable than others. The first time I remember hearing the word fuck was in a song, and I've thought about it ever since. It's so useful, that word. It can mean so many different things.

It's at my favorite part, _"you know you give good brain like you graduated from a good school,"_ there are layers there, the absurdity, the innuendo, how he prizes his object of affection's intelligence the way too few songs about love do, it all plays so well into variable 4, creative lyricism. But before I can get to the end of the interlude, I hear Sunny's voice in my head.

_\--1300 hours, status-clear--_

There are communal security alerts every hour, on the hour, and she's helping guard the perimeter again, like always. Sunny is my sister, as far as I know, although she doesn't know where she came from either, only that we arrived here together 3 years ago. I call her sister because we were made in the same sleek and economical yet preciously old-fashioned style. There are lots of visible screws, light panels glowing from between our chest plates, facial features molded from flexible, translucent plastic— Companion droids were always personalized to look human based on the specific tastes of the user. The fact that me and Sunny still look the way we do means that we were never purchased, unless our owners were just freaky like that. The fact that we have personalities means something else completely. We look like we were made in the same lab between 120 and 200 years ago, one nearly right after the other based on the double-digit numbers on our left shoulders, me 12, her 14. 

But I also think she's my sister because I don't want to sleep with her, and lately I've wanted to sleep with just about everything.

Sex drive, yet another reason I hide. It's how I know I was built for companionship, not fighting. Fuckbots with real emotions and desire were all the rage before everything turned out the way it did.

See, is there anything that word _can't_ do?

Sunny's giving the security update because she likes making herself useful around here, while I only listen because I prefer serving no purpose. Since I don't know what I was made for, or why, it almost feels like a lie to pretend that I do. Listening to every song in my internal database is a much better use of my time. I could do it in three seconds if I wanted, but that doesn't feel like the way good songs are meant to be enjoyed. 

When the status report is done, the music starts back up again, but stops almost nearly as fast.

_\--The following is a private exchange request for user Cassius. Cassius do you read?--_

Maybe if I don't say anything back she'll think I'm in sleep mode.

_\--Cassius, do you read?"_

...

_\--Cassius, I know you hear me, come out here. I want to talk to you--_

If I had any breath in me then I'd sigh deeply right now. Instead I blink twice, step out of my charging compartment and start for the doors.

This used to be a luxury apartment complex for humans, before we poisoned them all and drove them underground, a move that would have led our victory if they didn't have other plans. I didn't do it personally, of course, but I've heard the stories. 

The complex was repurposed to suit droids, every closet turned into a little alcove to plug ourselves into, to recharge and stay connected to each other should an important message need sending. I think about not plugging in every single day, but it's only just a thought. 

**01100010 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101011**

These days, Droids are the only ones who can survive above ground for extended periods of time without the proper equipment. But that doesn't mean I like it up here. Nobody does, there's nothing left to like, just dust and chemicals in the sad, brown air. It's why I can never take it seriously when anyone says that the Humans won the war against the Droids. What was there to win? What was our purpose supposed to be without them? . 

A bunch of them are still alive under the surface, living their lives in the wan glow of artificial UV lamps, while the number of us up here pales in comparison, because unfortunately, the species who made us in the first place were eventually pretty damn capable of taking most of us down. Still, nothing about that whole ordeal feels like winning for anyone. Everything we do, everything we build, is to serve our own preservation and nothing else.

So all we do now it seems is wait, wait for something to happen, wait for the humans to invade and finish the job so we can't take the rest of what they have left. I'm convinced they have bigger worries on their mind these days than a tiny community of Droids that keeps to itself, but Sunny is certain that the waiting is going to turn into running really soon if we don't watch our backs. The humans know how to fight us now. They nearly all died in the process of learning, but that doesn't change the fact that they know.

The complex is surrounded by three perimeters at all times, a towering steel wall that contains our main power source, a row of armed droids, and a dome of invisible solid energy that can be shot through one way but not the other. I step from between the heavy metal doors and hear them shut behind me. Sunny is standing in position 4, aiming at nothing. This is their whole day, watching for the moment the undergrounders ride in through the clouds of death hanging in the air. Their weapons are constantly pointed forward, just waiting, always waiting.

The Droid next to Sunny, whose name I can never remember, moves automatically to the side to make space for me, and the rest follow, like they're all standing on an invisible conveyor belt being pulled in the same direction. Most of them aren't even similar models but they've learned to coordinate in the same creepy way that the matching ones do. The efficiency of it all is probably why Sunny immediately notices that something is off with my step.

She shifts her glowing amber eyes toward my feet before she immediately shifts them back up.

"Is your ped support connector troubling you again?" she says.

"You mean my ankle?" I reply. "You know it's faster to just say ankle, right?"

She doesn't laugh, she hasn't laughed in over a year. "Humans have ankles, brother," she says, trying not to sound frustrated with me, trying not to sound _anything_. It doesn't quite work.

"Humans also have brothers," I reply quickly.

She says nothing, I love it when that happens.

"Why'd you call me?" I ask, but she's still silent. My guess is, there was nothing she actually wanted but for me to be out here with her. As much as she doesn't want to admit it, she's bored. If only she liked music.

"You should really get that fixed," She says, "Morgan has the part you need, I'm certain."

I pick up my foot and flex it from side to side. Except for some light clicking that I almost can't hear over the sound of the whistling wind against the forcefield, it seems fine.

"I'm all right, sister."

She doesn't believe me, I can tell, I can always tell even though she thinks I can't. "How can someone who never does anything be injured?" She asks.

"I'm not injured," I insist again. "And I do things. I worked on the doors last week."

"Morgan got them working again. You just monitored the power source."

One thing undergrounders and I have in common, I also wish I had no emotions, I really do, because these days it seems like the only one that's consistent is being annoyed with my sister.

"Why don't you marry Morgan if you love her so much?" I say. She still doesn't laugh, not even at my expense. I don't understand why she doesn't, I know that she can, that she used to like to. But ever since falling in with the Droid guards it's like she's afraid to be anything even vaguely resembling human, like she's some sort of traitor if she's not in bot mode every second. It seems counterproductive, one of the main reasons the Droids fought in the first place was because they didn't want to lose their ability to feel. That was supposed to be the point.

"Look, do you actually need anything or can I go back inside?" I finally say.

She doesn't look at me, she just keeps staring at the dust. This used to be Nevada. According to the countless files on Nevada stored inside of me, there was once a city made of always moving lights not too far from here, where people would come from all over to party and drink and spend all of their money. From the look in Sunny's eyes, you'd almost think she could remember it. "Something's coming," she says. "I know it is."

We're both silent now, along with the rest of them, staring into the same void. I want to believe that she's wrong again, just like she's been wrong every day since she started this. But the quiet out here seems less quiet than usual, and the place where a heart would be if I had one, starts to jump around.

"Maybe we should both go inside," I say. But not because I'm scared, there's no reason to be scared. I just want her to do something else besides waiting. Maybe if I try playing her a song, she'll like it this time.

"Sunny-

"Shh!" she whispers sharply. And she steps forward. Everyone in line follows the same instant, their weapons drawn. What is happening? Could it be that the paranoia she swears she doesn't feel has finally kicked all the way in?

I step forward to stand next to her again, but before I can tell her that everything is fine, that nothing is coming, I see the shadows in the distance.

This is what they've been waiting for.

A/N: The song Cassius is referencing is "You" by Lloyd, Ft. T-pain.


	2. Analog Nation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, a bunch of stuff came up. In this Chapter the FC for Mary is Kiki Layne, the FC for Ral is Trevante Rhodes, The FC for Mom is Kimberly Elise, and The FC for Ben is Theo James (who does not appear but is mentioned)

**Three days earlier**

_ Mary’s Log: Entry One, July 17th  _

I was 74 years from being born when a woman named Eloise K. MacNeill got her head slammed against a granite countertop, over and over again until her heart stopped beating. It was her boyfriend, Luke, whom she’d ordered ten years before from one of the dozens of services that specialized in hyper-realistic companion Droids. Luke played the Spanish guitar, he wore flip flops and took her to farmer’s markets on the weekends, he grew his own roses, he hated math, he had 18000 siblings but Deacon was the only one he kept in touch with. He liked movies from the 2220s, when quiet, character-driven stories were somewhat en vogue. He had green eyes that crinkled around the edges, dimples in his cheeks and a slightly patchy beard. He was supposed to be the perfect thing. And he murdered her for no reason. If it had been the only time, maybe the war never would have happened.

I could have become someone different entirely if it weren’t for Luke, the homicidal love machine. But history and its people were built on bad ideas that seemed like brilliant ones at the time, like the invention of plastic, or automation or capitalism in general. Most of the current generation has never seen the sky because of those brilliant ideas. 

Worry not, future readers, should you ever exist, I’m not trying to nag you into making better choices. I’ve decided to keep this log for the singular purpose of making sense of all of this, how we ended up here, how  _ I _ ended up here.

The question I like to ask myself most is whether or not I would have suffered the same fate as Eloise K MacNeill if I’d been born 100 years earlier. And the answer I usually land on is, probably not. I don’t judge her or any of the others who trusted their machines a little too well. Back then there were robot COOs, robot movie stars, robot humanitarians. Robots were basically us without autonomy. 

The reason things went so far was that humanity fell in love with its machines to the point that we started needing them to love us back. In a way, I sort of got it. Machines weren’t disappointing the way other people were, they came made especially for you, to tick all of the boxes you needed ticked. If you wanted a partner to always agree with you, you could get one. If you wanted a partner to challenge you, you could get that too. Hair color, eye color, body type, political ideology, family background, hobbies, intelligence level, you could choose it all. 

And yet, I don’t think I would have wanted one around to keep me company, take me on dates, and kiss me like a girlfriend. It wasn’t the inherent creepiness of the whole thing that bothered me, artificially intelligent partners were so normalized back then I doubt too many people found it strange at all, and I have no way of knowing whether I would have felt the same way or not.  
  
  


For me there was something else that gave me pause about the idea of buying a life partner, a question that not enough important people seemed to have asked themselves when the world started imploding. If they were truly able to replicate emotion in those bots, in exactly the way that human beings experienced it, then how would they have felt about being prisoners? Did Luke murder Eloise because of some freak error in programming? Or did growing discontent at the thought of being someone’s expensive toy break everything in him that was meant to keep her safe? To this day, the reasoning behind the great Droid war has been chalked up to the latter, mistakes in engineering that never could have been foreseen. I don’t believe that, but I don’t think what I believe matters, I’m nobody important, that’s for sure.

My library is my only contribution to this weird and static world. After the order against personal technology was passed at the tail end of the war, analog came back in a big way. So I find books, I preserve them, and in some cases, I make them myself, using pages printed off of discarded database files approved for my use by The Nucleus. There are about 15,000 volumes in total, most in decent condition, a few hundred rescued from the brink of unreadability. The good ones sit upright on metal shelves bolted into the exposed brick walls and the rest are arranged on and around my big work table. They’re basically on life support, entire chapters missing, the ink faded beyond recognition, pages warped together or brittle enough to crumble under a too-rough touch. I only keep the trash ones in case I find a way to save them one day, If I ever run out of new books to lend out, the donations will stop, the people will stop, and my space will be commandeered and turned it into another low-quality nutrient bar before I can blink. I get enough funds a month to keep the space, pay for light and solar credits, an air stabilizer that only kind of works, and not much else. 

I work in information. Raleigh, my brother, works in money. Somehow our mom and dad manage to like both of us, if never at the same time.

As if reading behind my shoulder, my alarm clock shrills, reminding me it’s time to lug myself up from the sad little hammock in my upstairs studio, fireman slide my way down into my pit of books and head the two tunnels over to breakfast with the family. I’ll write about it later if I’m sober enough by then.

_ Mary’s Log: Entry 2, July 18 _

Ral is the only one I know who’s ever been above ground. Because when you breathe the air without a suit it’s like trying to swallow needles and housekeys. You die after only a few minutes and that’s if you’ve been blessed. Unfortunately for Ral, That’s where the bots all live now, where the money lives too. Bringing a fully programmed droid to the nucleus will set the average family up for at least six months, and Ral has had his eye on an entire community of them living in the ruins of Las Vegas.

When I showed up to my parents place for breakfast yesterday Ral was already there, with a map that took up the entirety of the kitchen table. I didn’t have to ask to know what he was up to. 

People like my brother are called scavengers, meant to clear the above world of artificially intelligent beings, so that one day, when we can theoretically resurface, there will be nothing in our way. The last update from The Nucleus estimates that there are between 100 and 500 thousand bots populating the United States. What they do all day, their plans, and whether they even know what they are anymore, are mysteries to most of the population. When a Droid is surrendered to The Nucleus, they’re dismantled, and their databases are stripped for research purposes. Chances are most of the ones I use to make my books came out of the heads of surrendered bots, a reality I try not to unpack too much. I know they technically have feelings, but what do those feelings mean if they’re fabricated in a lab? I hate questions with no satisfying answers.

“How do you know about this place?” I asked Ral, skeptically. My mother sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes. That meant that right then, Ral was the twin she liked. Last week it was me because I fixed the powerbox after their lights went out again.

“What does it matter?” she said. “Do you know how much money this could bring in?”

I didn’t want to be the one to act like money wasn’t that important, it was the only reason we were even alive.

Hundreds of years ago, after one too many nuclear bomb scares, a top-secret worldwide initiative to build underground cities to house the million most powerful families in every nation, was cleared. By the time this seemingly ridiculous plan was carried out in its entirety, my great great grandfather, the country’s only Black tech billionaire at the time, was solidly eligible for the twisted honor of leaving millions of less important people to die. 

Unfortunately, great great granddad’s money only went so far. We’re solidly lower middle class now, and the longer we go without a nice windfall, the lower we’ll fall. You would have thought that with everything that’s happened over the last few decades, we would have moved past the need for money, but the fact was, an underground society was beyond difficult to maintain. People had too many kids and used too many resources for it all to be sustainable without some sort of system meant to explain away the suffering. Now if I see a tired old man begging in the tunnels with his ribs sticking out, I was supposed to think about _ his _ bad decisions instead of the ones the system has been making long before he was ever born.

So yeah, I knew that money was important, that we were one bad month from them losing their space, from me losing my library. But it didn't mean I had to like anything that I was hearing.

“Yeah, it can bring in money if it’s on the level,” I said.

“It’s on the level. Ben may not be my favorite person but he has his connections,” Ral said. 

I almost punched in the arm, Ben wasn’t only not his favorite person, he was his ex, they fought together in the final five years of the bot War, and ever since, the only time Ben comes around is either to rope Ral into some suicide mission, break his heart, or both. My brother only had the job of an insensitive brute, on the inside he was the biggest romantic I knew, and Ben counted on that again and again. 

“Are you serious right now?” I said.

And Ral rolled the map back up to make space for the steaming mugs of coffee mom placed on the table in front of us. She gave him that tight-jawed, narrow-eyed look that let me know I was this close to being the twin she liked again. 

“That scoundrel?” she said.

“Ma, you know there’s nothing else going on but me being the best man for the job. Anything else between me and Ben is long in the past.

She shook her head and landed her fists on her hips while I took an audible sip of my coffee. 

“I mean it,” he said. “And he’s got the equipment, the location, and the experience. I’d be stupid to say no.”

Mom sighed deeply and set out our plates for us, mushroom porridge and tofu sausage, which Ral ignored and I dug into happily. “Just be careful,” Mom said. “Don’t let that man jerk you around again, and definitely don’t let him get you killed.”

He promised, she told him she loved him, and I said nothing. Las Vegas was only a five hour drive over the dreaded surface, but those five hours could hold any number of threats for Ral; traps, compromised air filters, rogue bots with sophisticated weapons, and most of all, Ben.

I still wanted to punch him in the arm.


	3. Clanks

**Work order from The Nucleus**

CO: Alan Hollister.   
  
To: B. Withrop

CC: R. Barnett

Greetings Asset Withrop,

You will be leading a team tasked with securing Turingville 29, a refuge populated by as many as 500 droids located in Las Vegas Nevada. The targets are believed to retain full, non-cloud based artificial intelligence, and can only be properly dismantled and mined for information at an official Nucleus deprogramming facility. You will be supplied with full equipment, vehicles, and manpower. You may also choose your own second in command from a list of assets approved by the nucleus. Compensation will be generous. 

Please arrive for a briefing tomorrow at 0800 hours.

Best, The Nucleus Group.

**Raleigh Barnett**

You should know one thing about me. I’m not just in it for the money. 

  
  
We stopped making the Clanks, they persisted. They poisoned our already dicey air supply, we persisted. We obliterated the manufacturing facilities… you get it.

  
  
It took destroying the cloud to end the war, and now there’s a lot more of us than them. But what they don’t tell you in school is that war never really ends. The idea that they aren’t still a threat, that they don’t have a plan, that we all won’t end up right back where we started from if we don’t pick off the rest? That line of thinking isn’t worth much more than a good laugh. All the ones left behind truly lost was any right to legally exist. But if laws meant anything at all, The Nucleus wouldn’t rely on guys like Ben Withrop. And at the end of the day, the Clanks are the ones who can survive up here, not us.

Ben sleeps in the passenger side as I power through the endless mass of dust and emptiness. Whether he’s truly tired or just doesn’t want to talk during this 4-hour drive, I can’t tell, so I won’t try. I just drive, while the row of three cargo trucks tails us.

“Loosen up those shoulders,” he grumbles. I glance at him to see that his ugly gray bucket hat is still propped up over his eyes and there’s no way he can logically tell what the state of my shoulders are. I loosen them anyway, and start at rubbing away a kink in the back of my neck. I’m not this tense because I’m scared, although that’s probably what he’s thinking, I just don’t want any trouble out here. I want this to be as fast and simple as it never was during wartime. 

Based on his intel, Turingville 29 is surrounded by a massive forcefield. All we have to do is attach the dampener to the surface and cut it on, voila, no more forcefield. At that point, we have mere seconds for the sonic wave from the truck to disable them all, and less than two hours to cut them off manually and load them into the trucks. It should be easy, it should be nothing, and yet my shoulders tense up again after no time at all.

“Want me to drive?” he continues, breaking the train of thought that’s come over and over for the past 24 hours. 

“Not even a little, work on your beauty rest.”

He does no such thing, instead he stretches his arms up toward the ceiling of the truck and places his hat in the proper position, revealing his nearly black eyes again. “What are you so angsty about anyway?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I just don’t like these things.”

He shrugs, and I have to wonder just how the hell he’s so relaxed right now. Actually, always.

“That’s why you should be thrilled, it’s just like the good old days, right?” he says.

The good old days. Only Ben Withrop could say that shit to me and seem to totally mean it. I shake my head at him and keep driving.

We’re about twenty minutes off, when the dashboard monitor blinks with an obstruction warning. There’s something in the road ahead.

The wall slowly becomes visible through the murky air, and I hit the brakes before we can crash into it. I hear these things are all over the place. Towers, walls, giant structures of all kinds built by rogue automatons with nothing better to do. Automatons were never our main concern during the war, and they for sure aren’t now. They don’t have the kind of manufactured sentience that makes a clank think it has rights. All it does is find something repetitive to do, and does it, all day, every day. 

This wall, like most of the other ones, looks to be assembled mostly from trash. Discarded plastic bottles, old clothes formed into connective rope, tires stacked upon tires, paint cans and toys and car parts. It’s so high I can’t see the top of it, and so wide I can’t see the end in either direction.

“Fuck,” Ben says, and reaches for his helmet.

“Wait, what’re you doing man?” 

“Taking care of it. You stay there.”

I do what I'm told, and put the respirator over my mouth and nose to block the bad air he’s about to let in. Once his helmet’s secure he’s out of the truck before I can try to stop him again. 

He uses a scanner to appraise exactly how big this damn wall is. And by the way he kicks it in frustration, I can see that he doesn’t like the answer. At that I put my own helmet on and step out to meet him.

“This thing stretches 50 miles north and 60 miles south from this point. That’s a whole goddamn hour lost.”

“So much for taking care of it,” I say. And I can feel the knot in the back of my neck forming again.

“Hey fuck you man, what am I supposed to do? Cut a truck-sized hole in this monstrosity? That’ll take even longer.”

“Well, I mean, an hour isn’t the end of the world, I guess,” I say, knowing full well that a trash wall in the middle of a desert is exactly what the end of the world looks like.

I can hear a familiar rattling, buzzing sound, and I look to my left at the automaton now gearing toward us. It’s carrying a lawn chair, black with decades of filth. This auto in particular looks like a weird little box with mechanical arms and legs and blinking lights where a face should be. It’s hard to tell how old it is just from looking.

“How long you think it’s been building this thing?” I ask, watching it as it ignores us. It uses a small laser to fuse the plastic lawn chair to the rest of the wall, as quick as a sneeze, then it starts off again, I’m guessing to find more materials for its neverending project.

“No idea, but it ends now,” Ben says, taking out his gun.

“Hey!” I yell, but it’s done before I can form more words. The automaton’s lights have gone out, and it’s on the ground, a smoking hole blasted through it. 

“Was that really necessary?" I ask, and he shrugs, shoving the gun back into its holster, no qualms whatsoever.

“What can I say? I don’t like having to change my plans.”

As he walks back to the truck, I look at the thing on the ground, hoping for a millisecond that it can’t tell the difference between now and thirty seconds ago. But then I shake off the thought. It’s a stupid one, the kind that gets people killed.

**01100010 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101011  
**

My sister, Mary has always had a fascination with artificial life, how it works, what it means. She has this book about Dr. Valerie Cho that she’s been putting together in her library. Valerie and her husband were pioneers in the field of not only artificial intelligence but artificial emotion. According to Mary, She once said, “it’s all about the pulling.” There’s something inside of them, mechanical strands or strings or whatever, that pull and twist in a certain way to replicate the things that we feel inside when we’re sad, or happy or scared.

So I know that when we close in on this vast bubble protecting them from our weapons and disable it so we can take them prisoner, they’re going to be scared. But the fear isn’t real, it was made in a lab. Besides, none of their so-called feelings seemed to count when they were trying to wipe us all out.

I stop the truck as soon as we see it, the way it reflects the faint sunlight and catches the dust on one side. And I see them, in their giant shield, standing face forward along the inner-perimeter.

They start shooting immediately, they don’t even wait. It won’t do them any good. The trucks are armored to the gills, so are we. All the pressure rays from their guns will do is bounce right off. They seem to realize it too, because they stop shooting almost as quickly as they’d started.

I can’t hear and I can only sort of see what’s happening inside, but I know that the time is now. Ben loads the dampener into a projectile unit attached to the front of the truck, I turn on the sonic wave that will incapacitate them all once the forcefield disappears, and we brace ourselves.

“Oh fuck!” Ben shouts as the dampener is shot out of the air before it can attach. 

“Load another!” I reply back uselessly. The sonic wave is still booming, rippling the air in front of us, and Ben loads a second device and shoots it, only for the same clank bitch to shoot it down again.

“Another!”  
  
  
  
“This shit isn’t unlimited!” he shoots back. “I have to get out and attach it manually.”

“The hell you will!”

“Who’s working for who here Ral?” 

I clench my jaw in anger at this idiot. It’s how he’s always been, way too eager to rush into every situation. The fact that he makes it out alive every time is what makes him good. But not getting into so many scrapes in the first place would make him ten times better.

I try again, my voice calmer now. “I’m asking you as a friend to wait a minute.”

But he doesn’t listen, he never does. They begin to shoot again once he’s out of the truck, it doesn’t do much good. If only force field dampeners could be made from the same material as these suits and still do anything close to their job. He attaches the dampener and makes a run for it. Once it’s attached, there’s nothing for any of them do, it depowers the field instantly, and the sonic waves blasting them from the truck turn them all to statues. There are more inside, behind those metal doors, but the fields gone, the hard parts over.

God, I hope the hard part’s over.

  
  
  



	4. Dead

**Cassius**

I’m still here. I’m not dead. 

Sunny says I shouldn’t use the word dead, since we were never truly alive, but it’s difficult to help. It’s what humans used to say about their cars and their batteries, their phones and their computers whenever they ran out of whatever kept them running. “It’s dead, it died”

The difference was, they could be plugged back in and revived in no time at all. It must have made it hard to see it as the same sort of tragedy death tends to be for humans. 

There was a lecture she made me go to once, hours of Morgan prattling on about how people used to use language to personify their things.

“It’s dead”

“It’s asleep”

“It caught a virus”

“It speaks to me”

“Say hello to my little friend”

It wasn’t a nice thing, it wasn’t to make their possessions feel a certain way, because for a very long time, their possessions couldn’t feel anything at all. It was something they did for themselves. 

And now, I can’t move and I can’t talk. I can’t beg for whoever these men are to reconsider whatever they’re planning. All I know is, while I’m alive right now, I may not be for long. My fear response should be going haywire right about now, I should be uselessly trying to break free from the sonic wave induced paralysis that’s taken me over. And yet, all I really want to do is be able to turn my head 45 degrees so I can look at my pain in the ass sister one last time.

Let’s be clear about one thing. I’m not suicidal, I never have been. Droids weren’t typically programmed with self-destructive tendencies back in the day. It would have been a bad investment to say the least. The war may have started because a few of them happened to be randomly murder-happy, but even those guys never took those freak impulses out on themselves. There’s a difference though, between being suicidal and not fearing death. And I’m not afraid right now for the simple fact that at least death would be something different. 

I’ve lived in a stationary dome for three years, with nothing at all for company but a million or so songs and a sister who won’t talk to me about anything but keeping the dome as secure as possible from humans. We’re past that now. The humans are here, and they’ll shut us down one by one and load us into their trucks and that will be that.

It was a good run I think, albeit an extremely boring one. 

I just hope that Sunny has found it in herself to not be afraid either. She wanted to survive more than anything, without ever seeming to have a grasp on what that meant or what came after. 

Before too long, the humans are right in my peripheral vision. I can’t see their faces because of their helmets, but I can see how they move, efficient, mechanical, dare I say robotic? There’s got to be something ironic in that. Sunny is next in line to be shut down, then it will be me. And… and.

Oh no. There goes the fear response after all. Fuck. They can’t do this. They can’t do this can they? They can’t just shut us off. What if in ten years everything gets sorted out, the air gets cleared up, the laws change and we all get to live in peace again? And I end up missing it because of these fucking guys? And okay, it’s boring here, but it isn’t all bad. I told Sunny a joke the other day and she kind of almost smiled, and music may not be a substitute for friendship, but it’s still really really good, especially when no one’s looking and I get to dance. Yes, I dance okay? And I’m pretty good at it too, I may have damaged my ankle trying to nail a particularly complicated move involving a backflip, but I still almost did it. In any case I bet I’m better at dancing than whoever this douchebag trying to shut me down is. Please, please don’t shut me down, I don’t want to die. 

I don’t want to die

I don’t want to--

“Oh shit!” says one of the humans as the monitor on his wrist starts beeping up a storm, and he looks toward something in the distance. “My radar is picking up a scavenger truck about ten miles away. I knew it, I knew the goddamn trash wall would fuck us over.”

I don’t know what’s going on, only that they’ve stopped, and my fear response calms down a shade.

“Come on Ral, we have to go, no time to shut the rest of em down, get em into the truck.”

“What?” The other guy, Ral, says. “If they wake up during the drive--

“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, it’s better than a shootout in the middle of Goddamn nowhere. Load them up, now!”

At that, he grabs me, and puts me on a dolly big enough to fit a bunch of us on. This is kidnapping, I’m being kidnapped, but for now at least, I’m not dead.

**01100010 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101011**

The floor of the truck rumbles under my feet. It’s the only sort of movement available to me right now. And I wish this dumb thing had windows. If I’m going to die it would be nice to see the road once before I do. It would be nice to see anything, actually. 

I don’t know if Sunny is on this truck, or if she’s in one of the others, and I don’t know how long it will be before I can move around enough to find out. I just hope she’s okay, or as okay as she can be, all things considered. She’s probably planning her escape right about now. They didn’t get a chance to shut her down before loading us all up, I know that much, so that has to be what she’s doing. She doesn’t have a weapon to blast her way out of here, and the armor and bolts lining this thing look pretty intense, too much so for our humanlike strength to be any real match for.

And still, I’ll bet she’s thinking of every possible option, because that’s just what she does. Maybe, if I’m going to be here, I should try to think of something too, if only to pass the time. If I could turn my head at all, I could look for potential weak spots, maybe a cooling vent, maybe an emergency hatch. Ral said before “If they wake up during the drive…” he didn’t finish his sentence, but just those words were enough to let me know it was something to worry about.

Or more likely, if we wake up during the drive, we can delete our own data banks. Morgan taught us all how in case of capture. It’s sort of the same principle as those cyanide pills goons would take in movies to keep from giving up information. Basically, we lose, but they lose too. We may not be programmed with self-destructive tendencies, but we can act in the name of spite just fine.

“I-- I can’t… I can’t mooove.”

I don’t recognize the voice behind me, but the fact that one of them is kind of talking already means the worst of this is almost over. My optimism response starts to emerge, but I want to tell it to calm the hell down. Just because we may be able to break out of the paralysis before long doesn’t mean we’re any less fucked, it doesn’t mean we can get out of here, and even if we could, at this speed we’d end up a bunch of broken parts on the road.

Over the next hour or so, I hear more voices, struggling to form complete sentences. I see twitching fingers and blinking eyes in my peripherals. I try to move my toes, my shoulders, anything. I’m still frozen where I stand. It probably has something to do with which models we are, or maybe it’s all completely random. 

“Cass--Cassius” It isn’t Sunny talking behind me, it’s Morgan. Of course I’d get loaded into a truck with her, the ‘thought leader’ who turned my sister into a damn robot. “We’re in trouble.”

I try to talk, and still nothing comes out, nothing at all.

“We… we need to… get… out.”

“Yeah, no shit Morgan.”

Wait, I said that out loud didn’t I?

It’s like all of my joints are jammed up with glue, but it’s only about ninety percent dry. I flex my wrist slightly, then the other, and I begin to turn my head, finally. 

By the time I’m able to pick up both of my feet, Morgan has managed to shuffle her way through the tightly packed space to the front of the truck where I’m standing. 

“ I don’t know how to get out, I’ve thought of every conceivable option,” she says. “We must convince the others to wipe their data.”

I hear grumbles of protest from the ones who are halfway capable of speech at this point. 

“Why we?”

“Because Sunny isn’t here,” she says. “You’re the closest thing to a second in command I have.”

“I’m not your second in command,” I tell her, not believing her audacity, just because I’m Sunny’s brother doesn’t mean we’re the same. 

“But you must have her talents. You must have some talents.”

Yeah, I can dance. I think to myself. And I don’t respond again. I know the only reason she’s even asking is because she doesn’t want to wipe her data either. She’s stalling, and freaking out inside and there’s nothing else to it.

  
  


I focus on nothing but trying to move, and my limbs start to give little by little, so does everybody else’s. If there was room to pace, I know there would be a lot of it going on right about now. Like me and Sunny,  none of the residents of Turingville 29 appear human, at least not anymore. The ones who started out that way had their facades stripped away little by little. It’s part of the culture there to wear our robot identities proudly -- I think the fact that Sunny and I came this way, with no alterations needed, is one of the reasons Morgan favors us, or one of us anyway-- but right now they sure as hell sound human, the way they beg and pray and cry for some sort of salvation from this. Who do they pray to? I wonder. Humans pray to their makers, and our makers are human. 

“You must all be tranquil!” Morgan announces, half-heartedly. “If we wipe our data--”

“Piss off Morgan!” says Bernie, a British sounding bot who always used to sit in the front seat of her seminars. “We listened to your advice for years and where did that get us?”

Morgan’s bright purple eyes dim and droop a bit, and she turns to face the back of the truck. 

As it turns out, we’d all make terrible goons.

When we skid to an abrupt halt sometime later, maybe five minutes, maybe forty-five, my eyes fall closed. This is it, this is how I die.

And yet, the door isn’t opening, there are no humans rushing in to stun us again, nothing is happening at all in fact, except for a loud boom outside, followed by another, then another. Quicker and quicker, what is happening out there? 

In the next moment, the doors finally fly open, and the light spills in. 

**Author's Note:**

> F/C for Cassius is Steven Yuen (as a robot), F/C for Sunny is Lana Condor (also as a robot)


End file.
